Survey of development projects and activities for women in Bangladesh

The projects generally fall into one of six categories: self-help and income generation; health and family planning; education and literacy; agriculture; formal employment and industry; and leadership training. While donors, notably the Canadian and Nordic governments, have shown strong interest in supporting women"s programs, in practice most have been able to do little about women"s programming; the greatest impact on women has been achieved through mainstream projects which have a specific set of targets for women"s activities - particularly in family planning, which has attracted the greatest donor funding. A.I.D. has made the inclusion of women"s components in mainstream projects its standard approach to women"s development. Constraints on women"s development projects include the presumption prevalent in Bangladesh that women"s economic contribution is meager and unimportant, and the lack of intensive female staff coverage to effect house-to-house impact. An index offers basic information about the projects surveyed.